The Lucerne Festival audience recently celebrated a superb solo performance by cellist Kian Soltani, the 2018 winner of the annual Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, who played with the Vienna Philharmonic.

A skilfully constructed production, and one that plays with the our perspectives. Whether the images are flashbacks from a war-troubled Wozzeck or a Büchner-esque portent of the horrors to come is left for the audience to decide.

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed new(ish) music straight from its own bloodline (René Staar) under the direction of Maestro Franz Welser-Möst alongside works by Schubert, R. Strauss, and, inevitably, Strauss II in their first concert of 2017 at Carnegie Hall.

In a romantic, colourful jaunt which led from The Isle of the Dead to The Great Gate of Kiev, Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic presented an easy to love programme focussed on late-romantic masters who found musical inspiration in artistic masterpieces.

Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic present Elgar's Dream of Gerontius as a well crafted gem of the English choral tradition, but fall short of a dramatic outpouring of human emotion and religious fervour.

Imagine the musical love child of Strauss and Bruckner: luscious strings, wind chorales, hints of Austrian Ländler, opulent orchestration. This provides an indication of the sound world of Franz Schmidt, whose Second Symphony finally made its Proms debut.

Lorin Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra have a very close relationship. In fact, if they were a married couple they would have celebrated their golden anniversary in 2012, having survived and lived to tell the tale of a 50-year collaboration.